Meditation : A sport (analogy)

Meditation : A sport (analogy)

This Analogy has been derived as an answer to some fundamental Observations for the persons advances in spiritual progress.

It has been often observed that the persons advanced in spiritual progress have still struggled with their physical ailments 

Vivekananda, as per understood, had 11 diseases while his illustrour lifetime. Ramkrishna paramhamsa also had to deal with cancer in his lifetime. There are many such examples where in the persons with advanced spiritual achievements have borne the suffering and the pain for the physical ailments and diseases in their lifetime.

The question is should the basic health not be the first step in spirituality? The person who progresses on the spiritual path should be relieved of the pain and suffering of the diseases.

These led to the said analogy which compares the meditation to any other sports viz, Chess, Tennis, Cricket, Football or any other sport. 

Just as we take up a particular sport we need to devote time in practising the sport which is a set of procedures to be performed, we also need to follow certain process to be performed and practised. 

While we practise the sport, in the process our body gets conditioned in a specific way. Similarly in spirituality too we see the body getting conditioned in specific and at times baffling to human expectations.

Just as in sports, We need to channel our food intake and restrict on favourable food to support the sport, we also need to channel the food intake to support the meditation

Now, The perusal of sport will help condition the body in a particular way which will help the body fight the ailments and diseases but this doesn't guarantee the person to get disease free or get cured of the ailment. 

So similarly, the meditation in a way would help a person tackle the diseases better by taking out the suffering and pain but may not help cure the person of the disease. The person has to face the disease and ailment which is karma.. but meditation helps tackle it lot better that it in no way affects the persons life and daily routine.

Meditation is a process of ignoring the five sensory inputs which helps to explore the inner realms of experience. Ignoring of the senses helps person ignore, pain, sexual urges, hot and cold, infact all "feelings " which are the product of mind processing over the sensory inputs. 
The more time you manage to meditate this way (to ignore the sensory inputs) the more time you are devoid of all these feelings. You can sit in extreme heat and freezing cold ( as you are ignoring the sensory inputs of heat and cold). But this is only for the time you practice the sport of meditation. the moment you stop playing , you return back to processing of sensory inputs which will again start ruling the body to perform the actions mind generates post processing.

This I suppose is the basic ideology of meditation